


Any Cow That is Sacred

by sugarboat



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Eye Licking, Eye Trauma, Frottage, M/M, Minor Character Death, enucleation, like a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:54:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25038064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarboat/pseuds/sugarboat
Summary: Jonah gets a bad ending, and a new beginning.
Relationships: Jonah Magnus/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 12
Kudos: 56





	1. Chapter 1

Jonah had had his new world, had placed his Eye above all others, and watched from his seat the undoing and remaking of the world into its newer, more perfect image. A static, terrible thing, changed now and forever. They were past, after all, the end of time itself.

In a much similar manner, he had watched the creature that was once Jonathan Sims. Struggle and thrash in pathetically human desperation - and did Jonah not feel an echo of it in himself, too, as he reached and reached for his pedestal, saw the shadow of death chase him as his discarded bodies closed their empty eyes in his wake. Jonah wanted to live. Jon wanted to live. In such terms as these, it was remarkably simple.

He should have known something like this was bound to happen. Jon had been his, to shape and to mold. Something to be wielded, something to be discarded. An ordinary human, once. Changed.

The lynch pin of his plan. A precious archive of fear, living it, breathing it, stamped down to the bone and owned by it. By him. It was only after it was far too late to stop anything that Jonah paused to wonder what his archive would become in a world that was nothing but fear.

The Eye had long since stopped moving. The ravenous ticking of its pupil stilled. Its gaze, now fixated insensately upon Jonah, the pressure suffocating and immense. A flaying that pressed him flat to cold altar below him and still threatened to buckle his joints, splinter his bones.

From the peripheries of the only vision he'd been allowed, Jonah saw light. It was a series of faint impressions - the creak of an aged door, the clack of shoes scuffing stone floor. Jon didn't walk the way he used to.

Above all else was the light, the light. Radiant, and blinding, blotting out the remainder of Jonah's sight until he could feel it burning in the backs of his eyes, searing against the wet, thin meat of his retinas. A pain he could only cry out against, too weak to raise his arms, to turn his head. Barely able to close his eyes but still the light seeped through, stained red by the sheaths of his skin.

And he couldn't keep them closed, anyway. A new compulsion, thoughtless and unceasing. How could Jonah look away? Jon stood before him, terrible and changed, ringed in awful coronas of light and eyes and everything watching, knowing, seeing, dissecting, wanting, hungering -

Jon stared down at him. The panopticon rose in its glory around him, domed ceiling like the lens of the Eye curved in embrace above him. And at the center of it all, himself, caught in the jawless maw of the Eye's pupil, caught the in evisceration of the Archive's gaze.

Himself, again, as he hadn't been in more than 200 years. As he ever would be, a half rotten corpse. As he had been, since the day Jon had found him, had eased his eyes from Elias Bouchard's skull and replaced them, carefully, back where they belonged.

His throat was dry. His tongue was a thick, shriveled mass between his teeth that he could barely move.

But he did, his voice a rasp, a prayer offered up to the only thing that could answer, "Jon. Please."

Sparks danced at the corners of his eyes. Jon was a burnt silhouette of ash within the backdrop of scalding Seeing.

Jon breathed, and sighed, and he did not blink.

Jon breathed, and answered, "No."


	2. Chapter 2

This was a mistake, of that Jon was almost entirely certain. 

The panopticon had remained unchanged in his time away from it. A crystallized dome of perfect seeing, perfect knowing. It settled over his shoulders as a shroud. Or as a caul across his eyes, his face - an old wives' tale come to fruition, finally. 

It suffused through him a complete sense of rightness and belonging, as always. Entering the room in a swirl of dust-motes, Jon felt a kind of enfolding. The sense that he was being brought in and nestled close to the chest of the only thing that still would welcome such as him. 

There was something poisonous and ill to it. A wanting to lie, to be still. To stop fighting and just give in, to crawl atop Jonah Magnus' altar and prostrate himself upon it. To let the Eye scour him whole and empty itself into him, and together let their gaze unfurl. The refraction of mirrors, pointed inwards and then back out. 

Each time Jon came here, it was harder and harder to leave. The trick, he had found, was to hold purpose like a beacon in his mind, and cling to the edges of its paltry light to keep himself from straying. 

Although this time, he considered, that purpose may be just as distasteful as the alternative that the Eye wanted for him. 

The alternative that Jon wanted for himself.

Jonah lie flat on his altar, the same as the last time Jon had come here. Almost the same as the first time Jon had come here. Without careful observation, the subtle disturbances made from the slight rise and fall of Jonah's chest - even, but shallow and quiverous breaths - could easily be missed. A warping of shadow and form, the trellis of Jonah's ribcage shuddering upwards before collapsing into itself again. Easily missed, or taken for a trick of the light. 

Jon, of course, knew better. After all, he was nothing much more than careful observation anymore. 

If it weren't for that infinitesimal movement, the fragile remains of Jonah's body would seem a desiccated corpse. Well, that and the eyes, staring fixedly upwards towards the ceiling of the dome. The very center of the panopticon stared back down at him, gaze meeting gaze. The pupil at the heart of the Eye, riveted in its attention to its most ambitious worshipper.

Its most attentive worshipper, too. Ever since Jon had trapped him here, ripped Jonah out of Elias Bouchard's body and returned him from whence he'd came. 

The distance to the altar was a known quantity, the stirring of dust at his feet and the ever-increasing weight of the Beholding's ceaseless gaze as he came closer to its sight line. From Jonah's side, Jon could see streaks of long dried tears that had carved tracks from the corners of Jonah's eyes to crust in salt flakes at the wisps of hair along his temples.

Jon thought it might have been quite some time since he’d last been here. Not that time had much of a meaning anymore, as a concept or in a literal manner. Did it pass differently in here? Perhaps just for Jonah himself, locked in his endless looped stare with the Eye. 

Jon smoothed the brittle hair away from Jonah’s forehead. Jonah didn’t move. Didn’t respond to Jon’s presence in any meaningful way, really. The first few times Jon had visited, there had been begging. Nothing like the Elias he had known in the half-whispered pleas and coarse, rasping voice. The frail, withered body that even in those first few moments of its reanimation couldn’t gather the strength to lift a limb or raise its head. 

Nothing like Elias at all, except in the eyes. The same cool grey that had always watched him so placidly. Strange, how Jon knew them so much better than his own. How they looked widened in faux surprise or lidded in equally false concern. Crinkled with amusement, so much more sincere an expression, although it had taken Jon such a long, long time to fully understand it. 

He knew what Elias’ – Jonah’s – eyes looked like filled to the brim with satisfaction. The king of the end of the world, safe in his tower, awash in his victory. He knew what they felt like, slick and slippery with blood. He knew the weight of them held in one palm. The gentle give of their surface, a sleek, thin membrane that reminded Jon of nothing so much as a grape, over ripe and ready to burst forth its glossy insides. Their trailing tails of tangled nerves and vessels like roots, which he’d wound about his fingers when he fed them back into the gaping sockets of Jonah’s long-sightless body. 

“Jonah,” Jon finally spoke. He let his touch drift downwards, from Jonah’s brow to the sweep of his jaw and along the thin column of his neck. “I suppose you know why I’m here. Or you will soon enough.” 

Jonah didn’t reply, save for a tick of his eyes back and forth. On Jonah’s sternum, Jon’s hand rose and fell with the gentle swell of his breathing. The quiet thudding of Jonah’s heart, rabbit-quick with fear. Jon wondered if it was due to his presence alone or if it was always like this. Caught in the eviscerating gaze of the Entity Jonah had tried to use for his own devices. 

There was nothing left to wait for, but Jon found himself hesitating regardless. Drinking in the quiet of the moment and of this place, the air heavy with portending. Then, he lifted his hand, moving up until his palm covered Jonah’s wide, twitching eyes. Above him the panopticon’s Eye rolled. Freed from the Archivist’s compulsion and able to turns its gaze outward again, and on the altar Jonah’s body shuddered in palsied waves. 

“Try to relax,” Jon said. “This won’t be painless-” _he Knew this, the Eye whispered to him that Jonah had suffered each time he’d done this to himself, that Jonah had exalted in the final surge of his stolen body’s nerves coming alive for one last, mind-numbing moment_ “-But, I’m sure you’re used to that.” 

He ignored the spastic quivering of the Eye above them, gently folding Jonah’s eyelids closed. Jon kept his hand in place as he turned to the man he’d brought in with him, lying motionless on the floor where he’d been dropped. Alive – or, at least as alive as he’d been when Jon had fetched him, pulling him free of the webbing in which he’d been ensnared. The man actually resembled Elias in some ways, Jon realized. The sweep of his ash blond hair and the incongruous dark fan of his eyelashes over cheeks. Jon watched his eyes twitch behind his eyelids, and imagined it was in time to the twitching he could feel against his own palm. 

“First things first, of course.” 

First things first. Jon left Jonah’s side to kneel next to the Web-marked victim he’d extricated. James Perry, Beholding supplied, who had always had a fear of spiders, and who had always nursed a deeply rooted suspicion that he was not in total control of his life. It was tempting to allow James to wake. To reel the story out of him word by word. 

That wasn’t what they were here for, Jon reminded himself. Shivering, as he could practically taste the man’s fear on his tongue. (Greedy, some part of him chided in disgust, ravenously drooling like a feast wasn’t laid out for him as far as the Eye could see, and the Eye could see everything, everywhere, forever.) 

He brushed James’ hair back, the same way he’d brushed Jonah’s back. The same way he’d brushed someone else’s hair back, too, a sharp pang behind his ribs. James’ eyes were an unremarkable greenish-brown. His was pupil sluggish and almost unresponsive when Jon pried his left open with two fingers. Good. That was good. It meant James was mostly unaware, still. That he wouldn’t feel the pressure of Jon sliding the fingers of his other hand in around the wet bulb of his eye. 

There was no screaming. No dramatic flailing and fighting. James barely moved at all, his mouth dropping open slackly around a thin moan as Jon’s fingers squelched and slipped in his eye socket. Difficult to get a good grip – a tight space and a lubricious, squishing object. But Jon had had practice. After he’d gotten his fingers hooked around somewhat near to the back it was nearly muscle memory. A twist of his wrist while he pulled to snap the trailing strands of its nerves, though his fist tightened at some point as he worked it loose from James’ skull, and the eye pulped its sloppy insides out between his knuckles. 

“Breaking eggs, isn’t that right, Elias?” Jon muttered, wiping the mess against his trouser leg. It was already stained beyond repair, anyway. 

The second eye came out easier, cleaner. A lidless staring little sphere held in the cradle of Jon’s cupped palm. He watched it back for a moment before letting it drop to the floor. James’ eye sockets oozed blood in a sluggish pulse. There would probably be bruising, Jon thought, frowning. Gently running his fingertip along the limp flesh of James’ empty eyelids. Well, it couldn’t be helped. Elias could tend with a black eye or two. 

Was he more careful with removing Jonah’s eyes? That would only be natural, Jon reasoned, easing the first out of its socket. Jonah in his original body was so frail. And Jon needed these fully intact, after all. 

He held Jonah’s grey eye in his palm and wondered if he was still seeing, even now. Despite Jon closing them for him, Jonah’s eye was almost dry against his skin. Bloodshot from its unending vigil. 

It didn’t seem right. Something tugged at the back of his mind. Instinct? From himself, or from the Eye? Jon couldn’t tell anymore, and maybe he never had. Maybe there was no difference between the two at all. Either way, he was past denying the urges that guided him. 

Jon brought Elias’ eye to his mouth. He parted his lips and imagined that his breath fogged over its surface like over glass. Tentatively, he allowed his tongue to slip out, stroking it against the smooth orb. There wasn’t much of a taste, really. A bit salty. He kept searching it out, mindlessly almost, lapping at the eye between his fingers. Following the curve around its circumference, back to the tangle of vessel and nerve that he took care not to disturb. 

The eye was stickily damp by the time Jon was pulling James’ eyelids back again. Slotting Elias’ eye into place in that empty, yawning space. Then, he waited again. Watching. There were more theatrics this time. For all that Jon knew, all that he had learned of what Jonah Magnus had done to survive, he had never seen it happen. Not to another person, at least, rather than an empty vessel awaiting Jonah’s return. 

James’ body writhed on the ground, fingers twisted into claws to scratch and scramble at the cool stone beneath him. Elias’ eye rolled in its new socket and his legs kicked in weakly disorganized fits. Jon found himself leaning forward, offering him – them? – meaningless comfort. Running his hands along James’ arms, murmuring soft, empty words.

“It will be over soon,” he promised gently, not entirely sure for which of them it would be true. Did Elias usually kill his new host first? No, Jon thought. The Eye might keep Jonah’s body suspended in its pseudo-immortality, but Jon had trouble stretching that ability to the reanimation of a corpse for its favored supplicant’s enjoyment. 

In either case, Jon was right. It was all over nearly as quickly as it had begun. Elias looked almost humorous then, with one eye shut and already beginning to darken and swell. The other eyelid sunken inwards like a pit in the earth, making obvious the empty socket below it. 

Elias’ eye cracked open. A sliver of that pale gaze revealed, as he brought a hand up to delicately prod at where his eye was now seated. Its new anchoring. Jon swallowed, barely daring to breathe. Elias finally looked to him. 

“Jon.” 

A new voice, but Elias’ tongue curled around his name the same, and then – 

“Archivist.” 

– Jon shuddered, full scale. The Eye watched them, and he watched Elias, and he could feel the way he was watched in turn, pinned from separate directions by Elias’ still-scattered gaze. 

“Elias,” Jon answered around the thick knot in his throat. His mouth worked, but he hardly knew what to say. 

“Not Jonah?” Elias – Jonah – asked with that familiar, infuriating quirk to his lips. “Or James, now, I suppose. Again.” 

“I- Does it matter?” Jon asked in reply. “I can’t imagine you’ll be running off to fit yourself to his life this time around. Unless you wanted to take his spot in the Web.” 

“You should know by now, we all have our own spots in the Web,” Elias said. Cryptically. Jon rolled his eyes. 

“Yes, yes, the Mother squats above us all and pulls her strings, I’m well aware.” 

“And really, Jon,” Elias continued as if Jon hadn’t spoken, still prodding gently at his eye, “While I do appreciate the… gesture, there _are_ such things as lubricating eyedrops.” 

Jon huffed. “So sorry, Elias. I must have forgotten to pick some up in the ruins of the grocery I passed on the way to your _apocalypse tower_.” 

“Now now, there’s no need to be dramatic.” 

“ _I’m_ being dramatic?” 

“I assume you’re not planning to leave things half done?” Elias asked. Led him. He’d propped himself up on one elbow, and at some point Jon realized he was still touching Elias’ new body. Jon jerked his hands back to himself like he’d been burned. 

“No,” Jon said quietly, and then cleared his throat. “No, of course not.” 

When he turned to look at Jonah’s body again, it was to find that his head had turned, his single staring eye now focused on Jon. His mouth moving in soundless symmetry with Elias’ words. 

“Good, Jon. Very good.” 

His legs felt shaky, almost weak, as he stood. It was different, having Jonah watch as he approached. Meeting his gaze when Jon put his fingers in the soft meat around Jonah’s eye, beginning to apply the pressure that would ease it intact from its bone.

“You’ll feel this, won’t you?” Jon asked. Pushing, and pushing with his fingertips. Watching how Jonah’s eye began to bulge in response.

“I feel it every time,” Elias said. His voice was breathless as Jon _pushed_ , and his words ended with a quiet exhaling gasp. “As you’re well aware.” 

Jonah’s eye popped free with little fanfare but for another hiss of air out of Elias. Jon curled his fingers around it carefully and twisted, and pulled. It strained against its attachment before that, too, snapped. He let its nerve roots dangle between his fingers as he came back to Elias, still all but prone on the ground. Still watching him. 

Jon dithered for a moment before he knelt again. Straddling Elias’ hips because, well, he’d already put an eye in the socket closest to him. Ease of access. Elias kept himself propped on one elbow, and steadied Jon with a hand on the side of his hips as Jon brought the eye close to his face. 

“Don’t you think it’s a bit dry?” Elias had the gall to suggest. 

Jon froze. Staring. “I- Is it?” 

“No thanks to you, of course.” Jonah arched a brow, a perfect display of cultured impatience. “Well, go on then.” 

The absolute worst part of this was that some part of Jon still deeply, desperately _wanted_ to. The same part that had led him here unerringly. It was satisfying, like scratching an already raw itch bloody, to bring Elias’ eye up to his mouth again. Meeting the other’s gaze as Jon parted his lips and slid his tongue against him. 

Beneath him, between his legs, he felt Elias shudder. Felt Elias’ hips roll upwards to grind a hardening cock against his arse. 

“Really?” Jon sniped, but he paired it with another long drag of his tongue and pushed back into straining rut of Elias against him. 

“I’m not going to-” Jonah broke off in shaking almost-moan. “Apologize for something you started, Jon.” 

“Right,” Jon drawled. Before he gave in utter insanity and popped the entire sphere through the seam of his lips, letting it settle its weight on his tongue. Careful not to close his teeth.

Jonah swore and bucked his hips upwards. He dropped down onto his spine, freeing both hands to anchor onto Jon’s hips, pulling him into the motion. Jon allowed it – encouraged it, even. Letting his body be used for desires that were hardly more alien or foreign than any that had come before them. 

And cause and effect were simple enough to untangle, here. Jon rolled Elias’ eye around on his tongue, the motion causing his lips to part and saliva to drip out between them in a slick, mildly disgusting string. Jonah dropped his head back and rutted against him harder, irregular snaps of his hips rubbing his clothed cock along Jon’s arse. 

Jon leaned down, deepening his straddle. It brought them nearly chest to chest, Jon folding his arms against Elias for support. It took a bit of maneuvering, with Elias unaware of his intent, before Jon was able to align himself correctly. Pressing his mouth to Jonah’s eyeless socket and tonguing at the limp folds of his eyelids around his mouthful. 

Jonah panted next to his jaw, hot stirs of breath over his skin. His hips worked frantically now, as Jon worked his eye into place with his lips and tongue and gentle sheers of his teeth alone. Plastering Elias’ lashes together into dark, wet clumps that tickled against the sensitive flesh of his mouth. 

Elias came with a groan just as his eye began to swivel against Jon’s lips. A long and drawn out affair that had him rubbing himself off against Jon in time to each spurt of come that darkened and soaked into his slacks. 

“Welcome back,” Jon said when it was over. 

He tried to take it in stride when Elias laughed, and laughed, and laughed in response.


End file.
